As experienced professionals leave the sector, decades of hard-won project knowledge walks out the door with them. Chijioke Onwuka, Senior Project Engineer and Project Manager at Portsmouth Water, explores the option of an Al-driven project intelligence system which could be the knowledge bank that ensures the next generation doesn't have to learn every lesson from scratch.
The UK water sector is facing a demographic time bomb. Experienced professionals are retiring at an unprecedented rate, while younger talent gravitates toward seemingly more attractive sectors like energy and telecommunications. But there's a deeper crisis hidden within this workforce challenge, one that threatens to cost the industry millions in repeated mistakes and missed opportunities.
The Knowledge Exodus
Since transitioning into the water sector six months ago after 15 years in oil and gas, I've been struck by how differently the two industries approach knowledge preservation. In my previous sector, we had comprehensive health and safety knowledge banks where teams learned from other projects what went wrong or right. This wasn't optional; it was embedded in how the industry operated.
During a recent project review for an asset management maturity assessment at Portsmouth Water where I work as a Senior Project Engineer and project manager, I witnessed something that crystallised this contrast. Every lesson learned-from stakeholder availability challenges to technical issues-felt familiar to everyone in the room. "We've seen this before," someone remarked.
The project had been successful: delivered on budget, achieved all objectives, and created a comprehensive improvement roadmap. But what struck me wasn't the success, it was how many challenges were completely predictable and avoidable if we'd had access to similar project experiences, the way I'd been accustomed to in oil and gas.
These are universal project management challenges every water company faces repeatedly: stakeholder scheduling conflicts that delay projects by months, ground condition surprises that inflate budgets, regulatory approval processes that catch teams off guard, communication gaps between technical staff and senior management. Yet teams approach them as if they're the first to encounter these issues, simply because knowledge is locked away in filing systems or residing in the memories of retiring professionals.
What we're losing
Consider what's typically lost when experienced water industry professionals retire:
- Realistic timeline expectations based on actual stakeholder availability patterns
- Proven strategies for team engagement and scope communication
- Decision frameworks for external consultant vs internal resource choices
- Risk patterns specific to different project types and environmental conditions
- Success factors that work in practice, not just theory
This knowledge doesn't just disappear from one company-it's lost to the entire sector because we have no systematic way to capture and share it.
A solution already exists in other industries
During my 15 years in oil and gas, I saw how comprehensive knowledge banks transformed project delivery. Every incident, every near-miss, every successful innovation fed into shared systems where teams could learn from others' experiences. If a drilling project in the North Sea encountered unexpected geological conditions, teams in West Africa could access those lessons before starting their own projects. The aviation industry pioneered this approach decades ago, creating sophisticated systems to capture and share lessons learned across airlines globally. The nuclear power sector follows similar practices, ensuring operational experience transfers across facilities and generations of workers.
Yet in the water industry, with €104 billion in infrastructure investment planned through 2030 and documented delivery challenges (E1.7 billion in unspent enhancement budgets), we continue to rely on informal networks and individual recall to transfer project knowledge.
An Al-powered knowledge bank for water
At the Institute of Water conference, one speaker addressing innovation and technology shared a perspective that resonated deeply: "We may not keep up with innovations, but we should be fast followers of innovation." This is exactly the right moment to be fast followers. The Al technology for intelligent knowledge management exists and is proven in other sectors. We don't need to pioneer it—we need to adapt it thoughtfully for the water industry's specific needs.
Imagine if every post-project review, every Gateway document, every lessons-learned session across all UK water companies fed into a sector-wide Al-powered knowledge system. Not raw project data-that would raise legitimate commercial concerns-but extracted insights, anonymised patterns, and proven solutions.
A project team planning a coastal wastewater treatment facility could ask:
- What weather-related delays occurred on similar coastal projects?
- What regulatory approval timelines should we expect?
- Which community engagement strategies worked best?
- What are common ground condition challenges in coastal locations?
The Al would instantly surface relevant experiences from across the industry-whether from Portsmouth Water's Havant Thicket Reservoir construction, Yorkshire Water's coastal projects, South West Water's environmental programmes, or Scottish Water's infrastructure upgrades. Decades of collective experience would be accessible in seconds rather than lost in archived documents or retired memories.
Why this matters now
The workforce challenge at the heart of the conference discussions makes this innovation urgent. As experienced professionals retire, we're losing irreplaceable knowledge accumulated over careers spanning major infrastructure programmes, regulatory changes, and environmental challenges.
Coming into the water sector from oil and gas, I've experienced both the knowledge I bring and the steep learning curve of understanding water-specific challenges.
Younger professionals need access to accumulated wisdom to be effective quickly. They bring fresh perspectives on digital technologies, but they need context about what's been tried before, what worked, and what didn't.
An Al-driven project history library would preserve institutional memory beyond individual careers, accelerate capability development for new employees, enable cross-company learning while respecting commercial sensitivities, support succession planning, and improve project delivery performance across the sector.
Making it real
The technology exists. Natural language processing can extract insights from project documents. Machine learning can identify patterns across thousands of projects. Cloud platforms provide secure infrastructure. The challenge isn't technical—it's organisational.
This requires collaboration across the sector, everyone working together to create a shared knowledge resource. Individual companies would benefit from accessing collective industry intelligence while contributing anonymised learnings. Most importantly, future generations of water professionals would have access to the accumulated wisdom of their predecessors.
A personal invitation
I've seen the difference comprehensive knowledge management makes. In oil and gas, it was standard practice. In my first six months in the water sector-learning from Portsmouth Water, industry articles, and events-I've recognised both the sector's tremendous expertise and the opportunity to preserve and share it more effectively.
As the conference speaker said, we should be fast followers of innovation. This innovation isn't unproven-it's working in other sectors. We need to adapt it for water.
Our greatest asset isn't our infrastructure or treatment processes—it's the collective experience and wisdom of people who've dedicated their careers to ensuring safe, reliable water services for communities across the UK. We have an opportunity to ensure that knowledge isn't lost, to give the next generation the foundation they need to build upon, rather than forcing them to rediscover lessons already learned.
If you've experienced the frustration of watching valuable knowledge slip away, or if you're excited about the potential of Al to preserve our sector's institutional memory, I'd welcome the conversation. This is too important to remain just an idea.
The question isn't whether we need better knowledge management in the water sector. The question is whether we'll act before the knowledge we need to preserve is gone.
Source: Institute of Water